37 Facts About Ralph Miliband

Ralph Miliband fled to Britain in 1940 with his father, to avoid persecution when Nazi Germany invaded Belgium.

Ralph Miliband published several books on Marxist theory and the criticism of capitalism, such as Parliamentary Socialism, The State in Capitalist Society, and Marxism and Politics, and he edited the Writings of the Left series.

Ralph Miliband's parents grew up in the impoverished Jewish quarter of Warsaw, Poland.

Ralph Miliband's father Samuel Miliband was a member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Warsaw.

In 1922, Ralph Miliband's parents were among the Polish Jews who migrated westward, to Brussels in Belgium, after the First World War.

Ralph Miliband's father, was a skilled craftsman who made leather goods, and his mother, Renia, travelled around selling women's hats.

Ralph Miliband was embarrassed by having to work in this profession, hiding it from her neighbours, but required the extra income due to the economic troubles of the Great Depression during the 1930s.

Ralph Miliband grew up in the working-class community of Saint-Gilles, and in 1939, aged 15, he became a member of Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist-Zionist youth group.

In May 1940, following the outbreak of the Second World War, the armies of Nazi Germany invaded Belgium, and the Ralph Miliband family, being Jewish, decided to flee the country from the antisemitic Nazi authorities.

In London, Miliband abandoned the name Adolphe due to its connection with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and instead began calling himself Ralph.

Ralph Miliband had become interested in Marxism and revolutionary socialism, and visited the grave of Marxism's founder Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in north London, to swear an oath to "the workers' cause".

Ralph Miliband studied under Laski, and was considerably influenced by him politically.

Ralph Miliband volunteered to be sent to Belgium to assist the resistance movement, and passed his medical in January 1942, but as a Polish national he was not allowed to join until the Polish authorities gave consent.

Ralph Miliband served for three years in the Belgian Section of the Royal Navy, achieving the rank of chief petty officer.

Ralph Miliband served on several warships as a German speaking radio intelligence officer in the Mediterranean, tasked with intercepting German radio communications.

Ralph Miliband became a naturalised British subject on 28 September 1948.

Ralph Miliband joined the Labour Party in 1951, and was a reluctant Bevanite in the early 1950s.

Ralph Miliband published his first book, Parliamentary Socialism, in 1961, which examined the role that the Labour Party played in British politics and society from a Marxist position, finding it wanting for a lack of radicalism.

Ralph Miliband ended his membership of the Labour Party in the mid-1960s, and subsequently remained independent of formal political affiliation.

Ralph Miliband began arguing that socialists in Britain had to start working towards building a viable alternative that would be genuinely revolutionary socialist in its positions.

Ralph Miliband set up the Socialist Register with Saville in 1964 and was influenced by the American sociologist C Wright Mills, of whom he had been a friend.

Ralph Miliband published The State in Capitalist Society in 1969, a study in Marxist political sociology, rejecting the idea that pluralism spread political power, and maintaining that power in Western democracies was concentrated in the hands of a dominant class.

Ralph Miliband was passionately opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Ralph Miliband went on to say that the US government "made no secret of the political and diplomatic importance it attached to the unwavering support of a British Labour Government".

Ralph Miliband left the LSE in 1972, having found himself torn by the controversies which had beleaguered the institution over the preceding few years, particularly the LSE's responses to student protests in the late 1960s.

Ralph Miliband took up the post of Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds.

Ralph Miliband suffered a heart attack soon after the move, and did not enjoy the administrative responsibilities as a head of department.

Ralph Miliband resigned in 1978, and subsequently chose to assume several posts in Canada and the USA.

Ralph Miliband took a Professorship at Brandeis University in 1977, and lectured at other universities in North America, including York University in Toronto and the City University of New York, although he remained based in London.

Ralph Miliband published Marxism and Politics in 1977, and Capitalist Democracy in Britain in 1982.

Ralph Miliband suffered from cardiac problems in later life, and had a bypass operation in 1991.

Ralph Miliband is buried in Highgate Cemetery, close to Karl Marx.

Ralph Miliband was the daughter of a steel manufacturer, David Kozak, with a Polish Jewish heritage, and one of his former students at the LSE.

Three days later after negotiations the paper published a response by Ed Ralph Miliband describing his father's life, and saying the Daily Mail article was character assassination.

Ed Ralph Miliband's response gained support from across the political spectrum, and was endorsed by the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

Ralph Miliband would serve as the Trust's first chair, until his death.

Ralph Miliband invited both John Saville, his wife Marion, and other notable scholars, academics, and experts in socialist education, such as Hilary Wainwright and Doreen Massey to the Trust.